This is a short history of the mod, highlights of some of its features, and a word or two about who contributed toward it.

The father of the mod is Rory Gibson who begin the project about eight years ago. Rory labored alone without mod team support until about 2006 when a few of us jumped onboard to help out. By this time, Rory had completed three dimensional models and some body "skins" for seven cars; however, a couple of the desired cars were missing. The seven original cars were the Ford GT40 MkIIB, 1966 Chaparral 2D, Lola T70 MkIII, Chaparral 2F, Ferrari 330, Ford GT40 MkIV, and Mirage M1.

Soon after, it was determined that the original number of cars could be increased thanks to Nigel Pattinson's new patch to the GPL code. Until the 1966 mod was released, the number of cars was limited to seven; however, the patch allowed us to include the Ford GT40 MkI and Porsche 910 for a total of nine. Rory designed the new Ford while Shaun Collins and Bob Berman did the Porsche three dimensional models with help from Martin Huiskes who cleaned up the models of all the cars. So the field now includes all of the over 2.0 liter prototype cars that raced in 1967 (with the exception of the Posche 907 long tail which was essentially a rebodied 910) plus the Ford GT-40 MkI which raced in the production car class.

As different people worked on the car three dimensional models, each car is unique. For example, the Porsche 910 allows different driver faces and helmets although most Porsche drivers used a grey helmet anyway. You will note Graham Hill's famous rowing team and Jo Siffert's Swiss colors at Brands Hatch.

Early on, the mod team decided to include not only all nine cars, but to clothe them in the actual liveries each had at the eight championship races. This was a monumental task for our skin painters who had to develop 117 unique skins for the AI cars; not counting the extra generic skins needed by online servers. They did a magnificent job and you can clearly see the results by watching the AI cars at each race. Each car has the historically correct color, number, markings, and decals. On the Chaparral 2F and Porsche 910, even the license plate numbers are correct. Our primary skin painters included Tommie van Ostade, Ginetto, Ginetto's brother who goes by the moniker of Gentleman Driver, Roman Skrebbas, Greg Liebzeit, Francesco Molteni, and Paul Thurston.

Cockpits were paid special attention and they have the same dashboards and gauges as the original cars. Of special note, the Ford GT-40 Mk I and IIB and the Mirage have working speedometers. The Chaparral 2D and 2F have the correct dash plate chassis numbers.

The much heavier weight of the sports cars presented new challenges to the physics team which consisted of Nigel Pattinson, Richard Cooke, and Lee Bowden. Initially, our limited understanding of how to handle the increased weight caused the car's handling to be awful...they didn't corner well and were subject to snap oversteer. Eventually as we gained more experience and understanding of how GPL's physics engine worked, we were able to overcome these problems. Although only one of the mod team has ever driven any of these cars in real life (Bob Berman actually drove a Ford GT-40 MkI), we believe we have successfully replicated their characteristics as determined through years of research.

Default setups for each car were overseen by John Roberts. Although the player can modify the setup as desired, these setups provide a starting point for a decent handling car.

Also, early online testing sometimes resulted in sudden crash to desktop failures during the race. Although the exact cause was never determined, the most likely culprits were the car graphics files. Under the watchful eye of Rob Hunter, the mod has since been extensively tested online at all of the championship tracks without any further problems. Almost all of the mod team participated in the online testing at one time or another, but the major test drivers are listed below.

Lee Bowden worked on the AI and this mod incorporates all the knowledge that's been discovered in ten years of AI testing. The AI speeds are adjusted so that the typical GPL player can effectively compete during a race. As usual, the player can speed up or slow down the AI using the npt_override setting or GEM+'s AI Speed setting (which adjusts the npt_override setting for you). Also, each championship track contains the necessary file so that the historically correct drivers, cars, and car numbers are used. Their performance settings are based on the average of the two drivers which explains why Jack Brabham's and Denny Hulme's Lola was so good at Brands Hatch! So you can have fun competing against Lorenzo Bandini and Chris Amon in their Ferrari at Daytona or Phil Hill and Mike Spence in their Chaparral 2F at Spa. In addition, the AI cars have the correct fuel loads so that they don't need to stop for refueling.

Much work was done to match each car's reliability to its historical record. The player and AI car failure rates should approximately be the same as the real world; the Porsche 910 being the best and the Ford GT40 MkII being the worst. However, in the shorter races you won't see much reliability difference. After all, these were endurance racing cars so their reliability won't completely show unless you do a very long race.

In conjunction with the mod release, major improvements were made to the existing championship tracks. Daytona, Sebring, and Monza were modified to bring them up to their 1967 specifications. Chicanes were added before the Monza bankings and the Sebring chicane was moved. Martin revamped several of the track AI files. The fabulous Targa Florio track that Ginetto and his team released in 2009 was done with the 1967 sports car mod always in mind. Where they didn't already exist, track specific programs and maps were produced by John Bradley of BAPOM fame.

One of our premier sound makers, Wolfgang Buthe, made all the engine and ancillary sounds for the mod. Wolfgang was especially meticulous about the authenticity of each sound and relied on recordings of the actual engines to produce the best effect. Within the well known limitations of GPL's sound code, he did a great job.

Layouts were primarily done by the godfather of GPL, Arturo Pereira, which give the mod unique background screen photos and displays. For each team, the actual driver photos are depicted in the Team Menu which you can view from the main program screen or at the track. There are two faces shown, one of each car's driver, but only the primary driver's name is listed due to a limitation in GPL's code. Note that the flags shown are for the team's country; not the drivers'. This explains why you see the French flag for the Ford France team and an American flag for the North American Racing Team Ferraris.

The mod's main background screen is a painting by the noted automotive artist, Graham Turner, who kindly gave his permssion to use his depiction of Ferraris 330s at LeMans. You can view and buy other paintings by the Turner family here: http://www.studio88.co.uk.

The one click installer was made by Bernd Nowak.

Finally, none of this would have been possible without website hosting by Bill Cooper and Keith Smith-Gillespie.

Thanks Lee, it's great to read about all the important details! This only goes to show how much effort really went into the creation of this mod, even though I still can't really imagine the total amount of work TBH. I'm sure that DucWolf wasn't the only one who did a great job, so thank you all!

Hi FLoP. Yes it's been a hard journey, but I think you will be happy with the results.

Each member of the team brought special talent to the table in order to finish the mod which was started by Rory Gibson eight long years ago.

I won't spill the beans as to when the mod will be released, but we are in our final tests so it won't be long. In the meantime, I hope everyone can read and enjoy the mod information I'm posting. Tomorrow, I'll post the full mod Read Me so that people can look over that. Once the mod is released, no one is going to pay much attention to it.

Thanks for the history info on the mod Lee. I was trying to remember how long ago it was when I saw word of this mod at RSC. 8 years? Wow! A big reason I think the mods for GPL are so above stuff I've seen on other platforms is the difficulty and time it takes to make one. You have to have a serious passion to stick with something for years until it's done. Thanks to Rory for starting this and everyone else for their time and contributions.

Is Rory still an active part of the team? I was just wondering if he was still around to see his project come to fruition.

Yes, he is a member of the team although not on a daily basis anymore. Mainly, he worked on the initial three dimensional models for 8 of the 9 cars. All the rest of the mod was done by others although our 3DO experts, Martin and Tommie to name just two, did a lot of clean up work on the models.

Rory is keeping abreast with what is going on and really excited to see this mod being finished.